1. In his essay “On Stories,” C.S. Lewis wrote that he loved atmosphere more than excitement in a story. What atmosphere do you feel in the first few pages of The Silver Chair?I couldn't think of a better time of year, and possibly a dreary time of year, for the beginning of
Silver Chair than "a dull autumn day". Autumn has been pleasantly warm so far down here, with only a couple of really cool days below the 21C mark. But when I read the beginning of the chapter, I immediately thought of Good Friday, which in a cool year, here, can often be cloudy or rainy, even though it is just as often followed by a glorious Easter Sunday morning. Or more recently still, the Anzac Day commemorative marches of April 25th, starting with cold dawn services, people marching in the rain, accompanying elderly and disabled ex-servicemen, and the sober reflection about those who died in WW1 and 2, plus subsequent wars.
In Northern Hemisphere terms I'd imagine that the Harvest Moon (whenever that is) would be over, that there would be no more October multicoloured displays of trees about to shed their leaves, and that the weather presages winter. I'd expect the full moon might be a Hunter's Moon (I think that is what it is - is that the one where I'm supposed to howl to the moon?
). Maybe the time of year when the old Celtic festival of Samhain would be echoed in Halloween shortly, and Guy Fawkes Day celebrations would commemorate the November 5th attempt to blow up England's Parliament House at Westminster in the time of James 1 (Early 1600's)? And Remembrance Day isn't too much further in the future, bookending Anzac Day. I am going by tradition and festivals, and the countdown to winter, since I've never been in the Northern Hemisphere later in the year than October 1st.
And it is a day, for British students at any rate, which would be far into the autumn term, when the school routine and who's who in classes is well established, when we first meet a crying Jill, because the school she is at doesn't do anything to stop bullying, let alone the sorts of things which she has been forced to undergo. The school is called Experiment House, and, understandably, Jill doesn't feel happy there.
2. Why does Lewis wait to reveal that the boy is Eustace?First of all because Lewis introduces Jill first. She is a character we don't know yet and for the next chapter or so, if not longer,
Silver Chair is primarily from her point of view. Secondly, because this book can be read both in relationship with previous books or as a stand-alone. And, until Lewis decides to introduce Eustace, we don't know how he is going to react to a crying girl he almost trips over. He is just strolling along without a care in the world, with his hands in his pockets, a no-no for boys in that time and era, and until he is named, we don't know that he also attends Experiment House from VDT, even if we haven't read the other books first.
How would the Eustace we know and love from the beginning of VDT react to such a girl, so miserable in the circumstances, do you think?
3. Why do you think Eustace decides to tell Jill his secret?Basically, because he has been telling her some increasingly very far out sorts of things. Firstly to help her, and then when she rejects such help, to explain why he would be different from the Eustace we knew from the beginning of VDT. And lastly, but not leastly, because Jill knows only too well how frightful the bullying at Experiment House has become. It seems Jill is either his own age or not very far behind, and knew him from the previous school year.
4. If The Silver Chair was your first Narnia book, what do you think your first impressions of Scrubb would have been?Although Lewis is at pains to insist Eustace "means well", it does seem that he still tends to patronise other people somewhat and to try to boss them around. As he did on the Dawn Treader. However, if
The Silver Chair was the first book I read, I wouldn't have known immediately about his dragoning and undragoning, let alone about his other adventures with King Caspian X aboard the Dawn Treader. And let alone what he was like before that adventure he had whilst being enchanted as a dragon. The cautious, "he's not a bad sort", suggests that we shouldn't be too quick to judge Eustace, despite Jill's outburst about his reputation of toadying to bullies, and to listen when he says what he has been doing at school since the summer holidays.